In fifth grade, Charlotte natives Adonis Abdullah and Zach Alford bonded over a shared love of sports, forming a lifelong friendship and eventual entrepreneurial partnership.
It was that sustained love of athletics, as well as backgrounds in tech, that led the pair to found Hot Route Analytics late last year. The company is a Charlotte-based tech startup that partners with small and medium-sized university athletics programs to become their personal analytics team.
Alford said the ultimate goal is to give smaller colleges and universities the same competitive edge that large Division I schools have when it comes to analytics and technology within their athletics programs but at a much lower cost.
"We're helping to give competitive advantages to smaller colleges with a smaller budget," he said. "I go to Catawba College, where there are 1,500 students. There's no way they have the budget to put a ton of money into major tech for their sports programs."
"We want to hit those schools that struggle with the ability to pay for things like this," Alford added.
Abdullah, a student at UNC Charlotte, said as sports fans, they've watched how technology has taken hold in college and professional sports over the last handful of years.
"There was this moment where we realized how analytics and data were at the forefront, and in that moment we realized there was going to be this inequity," he said. "A university like Chapel Hill can pay a couple million dollars each year to improve the tech and facilities, where these smaller schools just can't."
He said athletic programs typically focus on three areas — in-game management, player development and recruiting. Hot Route Analytics' platform will provide teams with the ability to manage all three.
Because they want to ensure programs are getting the most out of the technology, Abdullah said they're working on each focus individually, beginning with in-game management and building out from there.
The company's flagship in-game management tools are mobile apps for football and baseball, respectively, and called Next Play and Next Pitch. Next Play is designed to help predict the opposing team's offensive play calling, and Next Pitch is designed to help predict pitches.
Next, they're working on an in-game prediction tool for basketball teams.
"It's about holistically giving coaches in smaller programs all the resources they would need during practice and games," he said. "I think the cool part is that it can continue to grow and expand past what we already have, whether that be related to venue management, physical therapists or something like esports."
Abdullah said they initially expected football season to be when the platform would take off, but Covid threw a wrench in those plans as many programs opted out of the season. Currently, Hot Route Analytics is working with a handful of football, baseball and basketball teams, from North Carolina to Texas, and expect to onboard more teams as the basketball and baseball seasons begin.
"Our hope now is that baseball and softball is when this takes off, and we start to see exponential growth," Alford said. "We think that will carry over into football and basketball in the latter half of next year."
And by then, Abdullah said the full suite of tools should be ready to roll out, including the recruitment and player development apps, as well as a news outlet website the pair has already begun work on.
"In the meantime, we'll be thinking about how to build on what we have, based on what we're seeing in the data and what we're hearing from, coaches and schools using the platform," he said. "We know we're close."
